


Last Ones of Our Kind

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Series: The World That You Need [5]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 22:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1202140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story slots in before the epilogue of "Everything That You Can Keep."</p><p>Aral has more in common with Hector Vorgorov than he likes to remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Ones of Our Kind

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Commodorified and ellen_fremedon for encouraging this, to Verity for audiencing along the way, and everyone who is still reading this series lo these many years later.

Cordelia had already vanished from their rooms by the time Aral disentangled himself from Arkady and slipped down the hall. Aral showered quickly, dressed in a fresh uniform, and headed down to the parlor where they usually ate breakfast. Cordelia was already installed at her customary seat with coffee and the morning newsdiscs on her reader.

She looked up and gave him an intensely smug smile, and Aral just barely managed not to burst out laughing. He sat down and busied himself assembling his breakfast from the assortment of covered dishes already on the table and managed to keep a more or less straight face as he asked, "Did you sleep well, dear Captain?"

Cordelia made an amused noise--gentler than a snort but not quite a laugh--and said, "Why yes, I did. Quite a restful night. And how did you sleep, love?"

"Very well," Aral said. It was not precisely a lie, though he'd woken up again and again in the night. Aral had been sleepily surprised to realize that it wasn't his own startle reflex waking him, but rather his response to Arkady being startled. In the small hours he had been equally enchanted at the realization that Arkady wasn't used to sharing a bed and that he himself was, so much so that he slept easily beside Arkady even on their first night together, as long as Arkady wasn't flailing around too much beside him. "Better than I expected."

Cordelia, raising her eyebrows, perhaps applied this less literally than Aral intended. "Oh? That would be very well indeed, I should think."

Aral looked down and concentrated very hard on not blushing like a schoolboy, with about as much success as was to be expected. The sex had also gone better than he would have expected, if he'd let himself expect anything beforehand. Arkady was, in every respect, better than anything Aral could have imagined.

Cordelia made a mercifully neutral remark about a story in the morning news, then, and Aral was able to eat without much danger of choking ignominiously to death trying not to laugh. He did keep breaking out into utterly uncontrollable smiles, which he was really going to have to get under rein before his workday began.

When he'd eaten all he was going to manage and downed as much coffee as he was allowed in one sitting, Cordelia said with a suspiciously bright smile, "You don't need to leave right now, do you?"

Aral checked his chrono and shook his head. Arkady would find him when they had to leave, and they had managed to get out of bed this morning in a perfectly timely fashion; Aral had as much as ten minutes to spare now. He and Cordelia normally took a little time to exchange schedules and strategize the day at breakfast, and Aral's inability to concentrate on anything more complex than his groats meant they'd finished eating earlier than usual.

"I just need a word," Cordelia said, and led him into her office, which had once been another receiving room. He remembered his mother holding court there, when he was small, but now it had a desk for Cordelia and another for her secretary. The young woman ducked out at a gesture from Cordelia, and Aral shut the door behind her. He wondered as he did whether he was in for a more explicit version of her teasing at the breakfast table, or--

Cordelia turned to face him, and Aral knew at once that it was _or_. She tilted her head in acknowledgment of what he'd already realized and said, "Not only in the interests of sobering you up before you leave the house, but as a responsible baba."

Aral raised his eyebrows, but Cordelia waved a hand, dismissing whatever invasion of privacy he might have imagined she was about to commit.

"Did you actually talk to each other at all?" Cordelia's mouth and tone still held a hint of humor, so it wasn't as dire as all that. 

Aral hazarded a half-smile back and said, "A little. Nothing of great substance, I'm afraid."

Cordelia nodded, looking unsurprised. "He told me about the man he had to speak to. Not a lover, as it turns out."

Aral braced himself for what was obviously not going to be good news, even if that was surely what he would have hoped to hear. "Yes?"

"Major Lord Hector Vorgorov," she said. 

Aral froze. He felt actually chilled, as the little safe bubble in which his night with Arkady had existed--which certainly extended to Cordelia, and was the result of her shepherding as much as anything--burst in a way he had not even known to fear. Of all the ways Ges Vorrutyer could have cast a pall over Aral's newfound relationship with Arkady, this was simultaneously the most obvious and the one Aral had never considered. 

Vorgorov had been a creature of Vorrutyer's, a protégé and participant in some of his later horrors. The most charitable thing Aral had ever been able to think of Vorgorov was that it was a shame he had been corrupted so early in his career by falling under Vorrutyer's command, both officially and personally. He had never thought that this made Vorgorov any less dangerous. Too know that he had had contact with Arkady--had had some secret, intimate control over him....

Aral rubbed his wrists, unavoidably recalling his last contact with Vorgorov, and then deliberately dropped his hands to his sides. 

Cordelia was watching him with laser focus, and she said, "So I take it is decidedly not an accident that I have scarcely met him in twenty-one years."

"Not an accident," Aral agreed tightly. "We have a limited amount of personal history, but he was very close to Admiral Vorrutyer, toward the end."

Cordelia's eyes widened slightly, startled, as though she somehow hadn't been expecting that. "Oh, dear. I thought he must have been rather more--how odd. Jole knew Vorrutyer's name, but he didn't speak of Vorgorov--or of Vorrutyer--in the way I would have expected if it were at all like that."

Aral looked away, recalling his own more heated defenses of Ges, over the years. "It takes people differently."

Cordelia came closer, settling one hand on his chest--lightly, not restraining, as if she were worried he would take that badly just now. Aral raised a hand to rest over hers, and looked up far enough to see her thoughtful frown. 

She shook her head. "No, his understanding of--well, of _consent_ , for starters, had nothing to do with Vorrutyer's tutelage. And he wasn't afraid, Aral, not like we were thinking. There were oaths involved which he didn't wish to break, but he wasn't at all personally frightened of the man. He calls him _tonton_ , for God's sake."

Aral tilted his head. He had to admit, the avuncular address didn't quite fit with anything he would have expected from the Vorgorov of twenty-odd years ago.

There was a knock at the door, and Jole's voice carried through, pitched politely low. "Sir? We should be going."

Aral closed his eyes and pressed down on Cordelia's hand, trying desperately not to contemplate the fact that Jole addressed _him_ rather the way Aral would have expected him to be addressing Vorgorov, and then he sighed. "Questions for another time, I suppose."

Cordelia nodded ruefully and stepped in to give him a brief kiss goodbye, and then Aral went out to join Jole, letting Cordelia's secretary in to rejoin her.

* * *

Aral managed, by dint of careful concentration and having set his strategy beforehand, not to wander off into woolgathering during Simon's briefing this time. When Simon had reached the end of his agenda, he tilted his head and said, "Your turn, I think."  
Aral nodded shortly and said, "I need to know what you know about Major Lord Hector Vorgorov."

Simon raised his eyebrows, looking unperturbed, and said, "I will take the liberty of translating that to mean that you've taken up a relationship with your secretary and now you very badly want to know what I know about Vorgorov."

Aral nodded again, more fluidly, allowing the point.

"I know a great deal about Vorgorov," Simon said. "Some of which I assure you you have absolutely no need or desire to know. I made his acquaintance only after Escobar--before you were married, you realize."

Aral did not allow himself a wince, nor a touch to his wrist. He nodded. He remembered, hazily, that Simon had been present when he was retrieved, and had stayed behind while Bothari poured Aral into a groundcar and took him away. Aral had stayed more assiduously in the country, after that, where his drunkenness couldn't get him into quite such interesting trouble.

"You are also aware that I did not arrange for him to be arrested by anyone, for any offense, at that time or at any time since," Simon pointed out.

Aral nodded more slowly. "I thought that might have been--to keep a lid on things."

"Yes, he hadn't done much you hadn't also done, on that particular occasion," Simon allowed. "Even under the modern laws. You weren't actually insensible, and no matter how much Cordelia argues for it it's never going to be legal to discount a Vor lord's word on the mere grounds that he's running more alcohol than blood, even if the word in question is an ill-advised yes."

Aral closed his eyes. "I don't remember much of it."

"No, you didn't even at the time," Simon agreed. "This was a little before one of your lightflyer crashes, and it wasn't any surprise if you didn't remember after that, but I interviewed you in between--I always felt a little as if I'd contributed to you going out flying that night, in truth. But you seemed sincere about not remembering much of what had happened. I can give you Vorgorov's version, if you like. Or Trottier's. I had them both under fast-penta before we released them that morning."

"No," Aral said. "I was more concerned about--more recent history than mine."

"Yes," Simon said. "Well, at that point we circle back around to the fact that you have no right to ask me about Jole's history with the man, and I have no intention of telling you."

Aral's fists clenched, and Simon shook his head. "Aral, consider that saying of Cordelia's about knowing a tree by its fruit. Jole met Vorgorov when he was sixteen years old, and nine years later he's the man you know. Does that suggest to you that Vorgorov's done anything to him that you need to know about?"

Aral blinked, and for the first time the things Cordelia had said weighed more heavily on his mind than his own distant recollections of Vorgorov: she had mentioned consent. She had mentioned that Arkady called him _tonton_.

"Consider yourself at twenty-five, if you like," Simon prodded. "By way of instructive comparison."

Aral groaned and rubbed his forehead. He tried not to think of himself at twenty-five at all, if he could help it, but it was true that the contrast was rather striking. Arkady was so _cheerful_ about sex; he so blithely enjoyed what ought to have been furtive and dangerous and dark. What had been, when Aral was twenty-five, and had decidedly not been, last night. Arkady was fine, Aral could see well enough that Arkady was fine, that he lacked the psychic scars Aral had subconsciously assumed had to be there somewhere, despite the thorough lack of evidence of them. If his fear had only been, as Cordelia insisted this morning, anxiety about breaking an oath--an oath to his _tonton_ \--then--

Aral's lips twisted into a bitter smile as he felt himself shifting from sickened horror to an equally unpalatable strain of jealousy at the thought that Vorgorov had been the one to teach him that, however kindly and gently.

"What I will tell you," Simon offered, "is that I can arrange for you to speak to him. I can see why you might not want to schedule that through the usual channels, but all things considered, it might be just as well to clear the air."

Aral met Simon's gaze--a little amused, but ultimately patient with Aral's embarrassingly adolescent fumbling--and Aral nodded.

"I can have him call on you at Vorkosigan House tonight," Simon suggested. "Just make sure to send Jole home beforehand."

"No," Aral said slowly, as things moved around in his brain, slotting rustily and awkwardly into place. "Simon, I think I had better call on him."

Simon raised his eyebrows, and not, Aral thought, at the security considerations.

Jole had known Vorgorov since he was a teenager, and called him _tonton_. 

"That is the suitor's place, after all," Aral said, smiling wryly, and he had the pleasure of seeing Simon look briefly, genuinely surprised.

* * *

Cordelia was out that night, gracing the Vorbarr Sultana Women's Institute with her presence. Aral shared a dinner of cold sandwiches over a scheduling session with Jole, and sent him home at the oddly civilized hour of 2100. Jole actually hesitated when Aral said they were done for the night, and then said in a low voice, "You're not going easy on me, are you, sir?"

Aral smiled slightly. "If anyone, I'm going easy on myself. A man needs a little recovery time at my age."

Jole flashed a bright, startled grin that made Aral think of putting off tonight's visit and taking him upstairs--twenty-four hours was plenty of recovery time for most purposes--but Jole ducked an obedient nod, not quite a bow. "I shan't keep you from your bed, then, sir."

"Your indulgence will not be forgotten, Lieutenant," Aral agreed, and Jole, eyes sparkling with promise, let himself out.

Aral waited another half hour, and then Armsman Jankowski came in to tell him that the groundcar was ready to take him to his appointment. Aral went obediently out, and the door of the groundcar's rear compartment closed him in alone. He reflected on the strangeness of the sensation for a moment; he couldn't remember when he'd last traveled anywhere without Jole or one of his predecessors, or Cordelia or Simon. It was very strange to be alone.

His lips quirked up in the next instant, considering what Cordelia would have to say about him imagining himself alone when there were two armsmen in the driver's compartment and doubtless a half-dozen ImpSec men shadowing his every move, to say nothing of the team that was likely already in place monitoring Vorgorov's house.

The ride was not long--the day's traffic had largely subsided, and Vorgorov's home was in a neighborhood not far from Vorkosigan House, a stronghold of only slightly less ancient Vor families. There was a uniformed man already holding the front door open when Jankowski let Aral out of the car, and he bowed Aral inside without a word, to find Vorgorov waiting in the foyer.

It was strange, actually looking the man in the eye again for virtually the first time in twenty years; Aral could see two decades of aging overlaid on his last memory of Vorgorov's face, and it made him conscious of how much more lined and gray he'd gotten himself in that time. Then the dissonance passed and Vorgorov was the same man Aral had known, broad-shouldered and well-built, gone only a little soft with age. His dark hair had turned mostly silvery but was still thick; his face was perhaps a little ruddier than it used to be but showed no particular signs of hard use. His blue eyes were quite unchanged, keenly watchful, and he smiled a presentable smile that Aral remembered. 

"Prime Minister," he said formally, offering a hand. "Welcome to my home, come in. We can speak in the study if you don't mind warning your security that you're about to disappear. Or perhaps the library?"

Aral raised his eyebrows, intrigued in multiple directions at once by Vorgorov's blithe confidence that whatever security measures guarded the study would be enough to block out ImpSec's watchful eyes and ears on Aral. Simon had had the whole day to clear this visit, and had sent Aral over anyway. He and his team had to know what Aral was about to walk into, and no one had warned him against it. That meant either they were confident they could crack Vorgorov's defenses at need, or they were sufficiently confident of Aral's safety with Vorgorov to feel sanguine about allowing him out of their surveillance; perhaps both. And if they had somehow missed this little wrinkle, well, what an interesting test that would make.

Vorgorov was still smiling, and Aral was not going to back down from the first challenge he was offered. He knew the old stories about worthy suitors better than that.

Aral smiled back, raised his wristcomm, and said briskly, "Bartosz, I may be going out of sight in a moment. No cause for alarm."

He keyed off before Bartosz could reply, and Vorgorov gave him a half-bow and led off toward the study, turning his back on Aral rather than requiring Aral to turn his. It was a very generous touch, and Aral had only a moment to consider it before Vorgorov led him into the room and said, "Just close the door behind you, it seals automatically."

 _Seals_ , not _locks_.

Aral did so, and acknowledged that the verb had been correct as the door gave off the faint but definitive sound of truly high-grade security. 

He turned to face Vorgorov, who had crossed the room to where a small selection of drinks was set out, and said, "Did ImpSec make a very great nuisance of themselves, clearing this place?"

"Oh, it wasn't their first visit," Vorgorov said blandly. "We are far too accustomed to each other by now to make it much of a nuisance at all."

Aral raised his eyebrows, but Vorgorov said merely, "Wine? Brandy?"

"Whatever you're having," Aral agreed politely, taking a moment's refuge in simple correctness. 

Vorgorov poured out red wine for each of them, angling his body so that Aral could see everything from the uncorking to the pour, before he stepped back. He waved a hand, inviting Aral to choose a glass. Aral walked over without hesitation, taking the right-hand glass and raising it to his lips without pausing for Vorgorov to drink first. He took only the barest taste--it was quite smooth, rich and dark and with a hint of fruit that made him want to drink again to identify the flavors--but that was enough to make his point.

Vorgorov looked a little taken aback at the gesture of trust. "You place so much faith in ImpSec's evaluation of me?"

"In Simon's," Aral said, and then, with a conceding tilt of his head, "And Arkady's."

Vorgorov looked even more startled for a moment, and then he smiled, looking amused and disconcertingly fond. "Ah. Didn't waste any time, did he?"

If Vorgorov had been the man Arkady had to speak to, then--"Was it him standing here, two nights ago?" 

"Not standing," Vorgorov said, his eyes flicking lower as he glanced toward an arm chair positioned so that whoever was seated in it would be holding court. It was Vorgorov's customary place, clearly. Aral forced himself not to figure out whether he had been sharing the seat with Arkady, or in what manner. Arkady had spent last night with _him_.

"We are old friends," Vorgorov added. "Not nearly so formal."

Aral nodded slowly. _Friends_ was an interesting way to describe it--did he not call Arkady _neveu_ , reciprocally? And then too--"Not oath holder and sworn man?"

Vorgorov tilted his head, and then waved a hand toward the chairs grouped near the fireplace. Aral considered his options and then took the armchair opposite the one which must be Vorgorov's, facing him across the fireplace. The fire was laid but not lit, leaving the room silent and cool, giving one no flames to stare into during a lull in conversation.

Aral suppressed the impulse to touch his wrist again, taking a sip of wine instead. There had been a fire that night, he thought. He remembered the warmth of it on his skin, after....

He looked up to meet Vorgorov's eyes as he sat down across from Aral. Vorgorov seemed on the verge of saying something, and Aral forced the words out before they could get any further afield in their pleasantries. 

"I believe I owe you an apology."

Vorgorov looked genuinely surprised, his sangfroid visibly slipping. He took a hasty gulp of the wine and then said, "Sir, I've been under the impression for the last twenty years that there was no apology I could offer you which would be sufficient."

"Up until a day or two ago," Aral allowed, taking his own cautious sip of the wine, "that would have been accurate. But now I have been given to understand that I've had entirely the wrong idea about you, and it forces me to consider our previous interactions in another light."

Vorgorov snorted and looked away, fixing his gaze on the fireplace. "No, sir, you have never had the wrong idea about me. If I have done better, and differently, after you, it does not change the fact that I was precisely what you knew I was first."

Aral floundered for a moment, feeling unexpectedly tempted to quote Cordelia to this man on the topic of redemption and unable to put his finger on what she would have said. While he was still searching for it, Vorgorov looked up again, meeting his eyes squarely.

"But as to our previous interactions--what do you remember about that night?"

Aral steeled himself and looked back without flinching much. The memories, such as they were, had been at the edge of his consciousness all day; it was a kind of relief to let himself think of it properly.

"Less than you do, I'm sure. I was drunk. I remember trying to provoke you and Trottier--" and the haziness of his memory almost certainly wasn't the only reason he had no idea what he had been trying to provoke them to _do_. He doubted he'd known at the time, either. 

"And at some point the two of you dragged me out of that dive I'd stumbled into and took me somewhere private. After that--I remember the rope," Aral said, and gave in to the impulse to rub his wrist; to say that he remembered it was such a pale phrase when he could still feel it there, sometimes, and with it the same rush of confused sensation, trapped and yet safe. "I remember that--"

He had always remembered, and had never told anyone, since Simon had not fast-pentaed _him_ , that it had felt good. He had no very clear idea what had happened, but he remembered the baffled, shameful pleasure of it where he had been expecting pain, punishment, something to hate more than himself.

"I was half-asleep," he said instead. "When they came for me, I was lying on the floor, and I hadn't bothered to dress. I wasn't tied to anything anymore, but I hadn't taken the rope off my wrist."

That was more than enough of a confession; Vorgorov would know what it meant. Of course, Vorgorov had been there. He knew a great deal more about what Aral had liked than Aral did.

"Yes," Vorgorov agreed. "We did that much right. Trottier and I were still learning how to be kind, then, and you--" Vorgorov essayed a cautious smile. "You didn't make it easy. Kindness was not at all what you were looking for, just then, and especially not from a couple of Ges Vorrutyer's vilest apprentices."

Aral had the strange sensation of recognizing his own words in Vorgorov's mouth while the memory of speaking them--spitting them, no doubt--remained as absent as it had been all these years. "I don't think that was the worst I called you that night."

Vorgorov actually laughed then. "No, not by a long shot. I think you actually attempted to challenge Trottier to a duel at one point, and he just told you not to be an idiot. You'd started saying horribly insulting things in a rather sleepy tone of voice, by the end of the night, and we took that for a victory."

 _Sleepy_ , Aral suspected, was a polite euphemism for something he would find altogether more humiliating, but Vorgorov seemed amused without mockery, without gloating. And for all the twenty-one years that Aral had thought ill of him, shoving away the shreds of memory from that night and focusing on what he'd known for a fact.... In all those years, none of the slanders of Aral had held those pieces of truth that had been in Vorgorov and Trottier's grasp all along, and Simon had never arrested them, and Vorgorov had known Arkady for half that time.

"As I said," Aral murmured, taking a fortifying sip of wine. "I have owed you an apology."

"Well," Vorgorov said, tilting his glass in Aral's direction. "Perhaps we can agree that it's all water under the bridge by now, hm? You certainly didn't come here tonight to rehash that after all these years."

"No," Aral agreed, and wondered at himself. Strategist that he was, he hadn't come in with any clear idea of what he would consider a victory at the end of the night, other than getting through this meeting, which seemed somehow necessary. Arkady had spoken to Cordelia, after all, and so it was Aral's responsibility to speak to Vorgorov. That made it even, as much as things could be even between them. 

"It isn't that I have to ask your permission," Aral said, because as much as he had thought of himself as a suitor, Arkady wasn't really under Vorgorov's protection--or to the extent that he was, Vorgorov had already released him to Aral before last night. "But you--you know him better than I do, in ways that are bound to be important."

Vorgorov nodded slowly. "And so you come to ask advice?"

That sounded right, Aral thought. Even aside from his long acquaintance with Arkady, Vorgorov clearly had experience of how men went on with these sorts of relationships--Barrayaran men, not the galactic ideals Cordelia still carried around with her. 

"Yes," Aral said decisively. "This isn't a courtship, and you know just how wretched my previous examples have been. I don't know how to...."

Aral waved a hand and realized that he had never defined to himself any victory condition for his relationship with Jole, either. It couldn't end in marriage, nor even in permanence, given their respective ranks and the need to protect Arkady's career. They could have a year or two together, at most, and Aral found himself already regretting the end when they'd barely begun, a shade falling over the fledgling affection he felt, still too tender to put a word to.

"How to do right by him," Aral finished awkwardly, when Vorgorov didn't step into the breach to help him to other words. 

Vorgorov spread his hands. "It's not as complicated as you might like to imagine it," he said seriously. 

Aral was suddenly seized with the vision of Vorgorov giving this advice over and over, to spotty cadets and officers of all ages and ranks and now, at last, to Prime Minister Admiral Count Vorkosigan, the same as any of them. 

"Be kind," Vorgorov said simply. "Discreet, but I needn't tell you that. Kindness is all. I don't mean that you should indulge him or give him his way in everything; you of all people know how to bring a young officer along. But if you want to be good to him--be good to him, that's all. There's no special mystery in it just because he's a man and you're going to bed with him, and I promise he doesn't expect much."

Aral grimaced, remembering the way Arkady had said, with visible daring, _All I want to know is whether you're going to stay here with me tonight._

"I'd like to do rather better than simply giving him more than he expects."

Vorgorov smiled. "Well, then I expect you'll do just fine. It's more than Trottier and I had to go on, back when, and we've managed this far. Vorrutyer didn't make any more of a hash of you than he did of us, I don't think."

Aral thought of Simon quoting Cordelia, about trees and their fruit; he thought for a dizzy second that anyone judging Ges Vorrutyer by him and Vorgorov just now would come away with an altogether too kind impression, but then--

"He didn't make us," Aral said thoughtfully. "We survived him."

Vorgorov's smile turned wry, but he raised his glass in a salute of agreement. "So we did. And if we work like hell maybe we'll leave behind men who say better than that of us."

Aral raised his own glass to that, and drank deep.


End file.
